Abstract
The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore health promotion processes of Local Administrative
Organizations (LAOs). Data were collected by using mail questionnaires from May to December
2007. The subjects were 950 executives of LAOs obtained by stratification and simple random sampling. Five hundred and thirty-two LAOs responded to the questionnaires (56.0 %). The results showed that the
scores of LAOs’ health promotion processes were at a moderate level (54.5 %). The majority of LAOs did
not have a division of public health in their organization’s structure (62.8 %), had a health promotion
policy (51.7 %) but the specified policy constituted a real policy for only 7.5 percent of them, had health
promotion plans/projects (95.7%), and supported budgets and materials for other institutes for health
promotion processes (89.5%). However, health promotion processes were evaluated and used for improvement
in only 38.9 percent of the LAOs. The majority of LAOs did not receive materials and budgets
from other institutes in 78.0 and 61.7 percent, respectively, but did receive mass media and knowledge in
70.3 and 65.4 percent of them, respectively. The LAOs needed support from the Thai Health Promotion
Foundation, National Health Security Office and Provincial Public Health Offices in 94.0, 91.0, and 89.5
percent, respectively. Major problems in the health promotion processes of LAOs were a lack of public
health personnel, budget and knowledge of health promotion.
The recommendations from this research are to integrate policies at the ministerial level, and to set
the standards of health processes and evaluation in the same direction for all provinces, districts and
subdistrict. The LAOs should establish a division of public health in their structure, enact local legislation
concerning health promotion, support budget and health personnel, and train the leaders of LAOs about
the vision of health promotion. Moreover, public health organizations should promote self-care, give
advice and vigorously act as advisor of the LAOs in terms of health promotion.
